
/6 

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A DISCOURSE 



MORAL TENDENCIES AND RESULTS 



HUMAN HISTORY, 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE SOCIETY OF ALUMNI, 



3u |3alc College, 



On Wednesday, August 16tli, 1§43, 



HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D. 



PUBLISHED BY 

M. Y. BEACH,— NEW YORK; 

T. H. PEASE,— NEW HAVEN; 

J. W. JUDD,— HARTFORD. 

1843. 



\^ 






DISCOURSE. 



Gentlemen of the Alumni — 

It is rather a mechanical than a classic art, that 
seeks, by smooth preliminaries, to propitiate a favorable audi- 
ence. Besides, if I have nothing to say worthy of your atten- 
tion, I shall not hide the deficiency by any gloss of compli- 
ments or apologies ; and, if I have, I can pay you no better 
compliment, than to presume that you are ready to hear me 
without enticement- 
It is then a law, I will say, of humanity, in all its forms of 
life and progress, that the physical shall precede the moral. 
The order of nature is — what is physical first, what is moral 
afterwards. 

The child begins his career as a creature of muscles and 
integuments, a physical being endued with sensation. Whole 
years are expended in making acquaintance with the body he 
lives in. By acting in and through this organ, he discovers 
himself, begins to be a thinking and reflective creature, and 
finally rises to a character of intelligence and moral gravity. 

The world itself is first a lump of dull earth, a mere phys- 
ical thing seen by the five senses. The animals that graze on 
it, see it as we do. But thought, a little farther on, begins to 
work upon it and bring out its laws. The heights are ascended, 
the depths explored, and every star and atom is found to be so 
cognate to thought that mind can think out and assign its 
laws. The whole field of being thus brought into science, 
takes an attribute of intelligence and reflects a Universal Mind. 
Every object of knowledge and experience, too, discovers 
moral ends and uses, and assumes a visible relation to our 



spiritual destin}'. Now the old physical orb, on which our live 
senses grazed, is gone — wc cannot find it. All objects are 
become mental objects, and matter itself is moral. 

If we speak of language, this, as every scholar knows, is 
physical every term. Words are only the names of exter- 
nal things and objects, as seen by the eye of a child, or of the 
unreflecting man. Next, the words, wliich are mere physical 
terms, pass into use as figures of thought — they become 
endued with intelligence and a moral power. Sublimed by 
the penetration of a moral nature, they are wrought up, at 
length, into the highest forms of literature. The physical 
world takes a second and higher existence in tlie empire of 
thouoht. Its objects beam out, transfigured with glory, and 
the body of matter becomes the body of letters. The story 
of Orpheus is now no more a fiction ; for not only do the v/oods 
and rocks dance after this one singer, but all ])h_ysical objects, 
in heaven and ejrth, liaving now found an intellectual as well 
as a material power, follow after the creative agency of think- 
hio" souls, and pour themseUes along, in troops of glory, on 
the pages of literature. 

Religion, too, is physical in its first tendencies, a thing of 
outward doing: — a lamb, burned on an altar of turf, and 
rolling up its smoke into the heavens — a gorgeous priesthood 
— a temple, covered with a kingdom's gold, and shining afar 
in barbaric splendor. Well is it if the sun and the stars of 
heaven do not look down upon realms of prostrate worship- 
pers. Nay, it is well if the hands do not fashion their own 
oods, and bake them into consistency in fires of their own 
kindling. But, in the later ages, God is a Spirit ; religion 
takes a character of intellectual simplicity and enthrones itself 
in the summits of the reason. It is wholly spiritual, a power 
in the soul, reaching out into worlds beyond sense, and fixing 
its home and rest where only hope can soar. 

Civil government, also, in its first stages, classes rather 
with the dynamic than with the moral forces. It is the law 
of the strongest, a mere physical absolutism, without any 
consideration of right, whether as due to enemies or subjects. 
At length, after it has worn itself deep into the neck of nations, 



by long ages of arbitrary rule, the masses begin to heave 
with surges of uneasiness. They discover the worth of their 
being in what it suffers, and their right to be happy. They 
reason al)out rights, they rebel, and revolutionize, they set 
limits to power, and define its objects, till, at length, govern- 
ment loses its physical character and seeks to rest itself on 
moral foundations, — on the good it does, the love it wins, 
the patriotic fire it kindles ; in a word, on the moral sentiment 
of the governed. 

You see, in this brief glance, how the motion of society is 
ever from the physical towards the moral. Here I come for- 
ward and undertake to show, in coincidence with this fact, 
that it is the great problem of human history to enthrone 
THE moral element — tliat is, the element of virtue. There 
are before us, too, as involved in this truth, certain confines, 
that separate the Physical from what may perhaps be 
called the Moral Age of the world. These confines we must 
some time pass ; and in making the transition, we enter a new 
and better circle of history — the same if we please to indulge 
the fancy, which gleamed so brightly, as a future golden age, 
on the vision of the ancient sages and seers of classic days — 
the same, with no indulgence of fancy, which wiser sages 
and prophets more inspired, have boldly promised in the 
name of God. 

Of course it does not become me, on a subject of this nature, 
to speak as a prophet m^-self. But if I can help you to antic- 
ipate any so splendid result to the painful and wearisome 
history of our race ; if I can bring to the toils of virtue in our 
bosoms, any new confidence or hope of triumph ; if I can 
open to learning and genius new fields of empire, and higher 
tiers of glory to be ascended ; — I shall not speak in vain, or 
want a justification before you. 

This venerable institution exists for a moral purpose. 
Letters are here subordinate to virtue. With the deepest 
veneration for the classics, and for intellectual ornament of 
every kind, its founders could 3'ct value this kind of discipline, 
chiefly as the means to a yet higher end, and one in which, as 
we shall see, they embraced whatsoever is good or magnifi- 



cent in the future history of their race. Their original design 
has never once been forgotten. The institution still values 
itself and is valued by its numerous body of friends, in every 
part of our great country, as the support of virtue and the 
ornament of religion. We ourselves cleave to it as to a virtu- 
ous mother, whose name and remembrance is made dearer to 
us, by the moral experience of life and the wisdom of years. 
Possibly, if mere learning or literary splendor were its olrject, 
it might have gained an easier celebrity, and, with less of 
elegant learning, might have had the repute of more. But 
virtue and truth have a long run, and it will be found, as the 
years and ages wear away, and society ascends to its destiny 
of splendor, that this institution, modestly ordained to be the 
servant of virtue, ascends with it, and gains to itself the 
highest honors of learning, by its union to the highest well 
being and glory of the race. 

My subject, then, belongs to the place and the occasion. 
We stand here on a moral eminence, where learning unites her 
destinies to that of virtue, we look abroad up and down the 
track of human life, to see whither it leads, and especially, to 
fortify our confidence of a day when all the great forces of 
society — policy, law, power, learning, and art — shall bow to 
the lordship of virtue, and the moral element of society shall, 
at last, have its rightful supremacy. 

What now, let us ask, is necessary to this result — by wdiat 
means, if at all, shall it be reached ? This we shall see by a 
glance at the nature of the moral element. 

Virtue is twofold. It inchides an inward principle and an 
outward conduct or manifestation. Its principle is an idea of 
the mind or conscience — a simple, eternal, immutable idea, 
viz. Right.* This idea, or ideal laws, runs through all con- 
sciences, in all ages, and is the same in all. Obedience to this 



* The idea of Right, like ihat of space, cause, time, and some others, is uiidefi- 
nable because of its strict simplicity. It is yet distinguished from all others as the 
Regent Power of the mind, that which subordinates all the powers and functions 
of the Life, and thus becomes the highest summit of unity. It is such a power 
that, considered as simply existing in the mind, or coming into thought, we are 
incapable of denying its authority. 



law, as the general aim and desire of the life, constitutes the 
whole substance of virtue. Or, if we consider this ideal law 
as enforced by a divine government above us, (for that is the 
whole object of divine government,) then a like general aim 
and desire to obey God is the substance of virtue. The former 
is virtue as moral only — this is religious virtue. 

If, now w^e pass over to the outward conduct of life, the 
sphere of particular action, we come into a different world. 
It is as when we pass out of the pure mathematics, which are 
absolute ideal truth, into the region of forms, distances, colors 
and forces. The substance of virtue is not here, but only her 
forms of action. Her being is constituted by obedience to the 
immutable law of the conscience. Here she comes forth to 
find expression, or, as we say, to act out her being. But the 
world of outward action is made up of an infinite number and 
variety of particulars, and these are separable by no absolute 
distinctions, but are continually flowing towards or into each 
other. We ask what is useful, equal, true, beautiful, in a word, 
what forms of action are aesthetically fit to express a right spirit, 
and so draw out our rules of conduct, just as the painter elabo- 
rates the rules of his art.* These rules of conduct are, of 
necessity, only proximate. They may be crude and discor- 
dant, they may be such as even to limit, and, as a more culti- 
vated age might judge, to corrupt the strength of virtue. Of 
course, there is room for indefinite amplification and refine- 
ment in this outward code, if by any means it may be accom- 
plished. 

* We have a way of speaking which attributes the approval or disapproval of 
outward acts to the conscience. But according to the scheme of ethics here 
adopted, this is true only in a popular sense. The conscience is our sense of the 
authority of right, or our consciousness of receiving or rejecting this great internal 
law. All questions of outward duty are questions of custom, revelation, judg- 
ment, taste — they belong to the sphere of outward criticism, in which we are 
impelled by the internal law, and seek to realize it. The conscience is no out-door 
faculty, as the popular language supposes. That we come into being with a con- 
science in which all possible acts, in all possible circumstances, are discriminated, 
Avith infallible certainty, beforehand, and apart from the aid of experience and 
judgment, is incredible. GLuite as hard for belief is it, that, if our conscience were 
required, by itself, to settle all the questions of duty as they occur, (which perhaps 
is the popular notion,) it would not rise up, like Mercury among the gods as Lucian 
fancies, and protest against the infinite business of all sorts it has thrown upon it- 



Having in view lliis twofold nature of virtue, we perceive 
that there are two ways in which it may possibly advance its 
power, and only two. If the tone of the conscience, or of 
its ideal law can be invigorated ; if also the aesthetic power, 
that wdiich discriminates iu outward Ibrms, can be so disci- 
plined as to perceive all that is beautiful in conduct, and pro- 
duce a perfect outward code ; then the moral element will 
have its two conditions of victory. 

Two fields of inquiry then are opened by my subject, and 
the whole extent of human history, its philosophy and laws 
of motion lie confronted in it. I need not tell you that I am 
oppressed by its vastness, or that I must seek some method 
of limitation that will bring it within the possible range of the 
occasion 

This I shall do, by showing you first, in a general way, that 
the moral element has a twofold law of increment in the ways 
I have just now specified. I well then take up three distinct 
forces which enter most vigorously into this progress, the 
Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, show their imperishable 
power, and trace their future action. 

Is there any law, then, in human history, by whicli the 
authority of conscience is progressivel}" invigorated ? 

Leaving out of view religious causes, of which I will speak 
in another place, consider the remarkable and ever widening 
contrast that sul)sists, between the earliest and latest genera- 
tions of history, in respect to a reflective habit. The childlike 
age, whether of the individual or of the race, never reflects 
on itself. The literature and conduct of the early generations 
are marked by a certain primitive simplicity. The whole 
motion of their being travels outward, as the water from 
imdcr the hills, and no drop thinks to go back and see whence 
it came. They act and sing right out, unconscious even in 
their greatness, as the harp of its m.usic, or the lightning of 
its thunder. Virtue in such an age is mainly impulsive. It 
is such a kind of virtue as has not intellectually discovered 
its law. If now the mind becomes reflective in its habit, if it 
analyzes itself and discovers, among all the powers and emo- 



tions of the soul — some permanent, and many fugitive as the 
winds — one great, eternal, irreversible law, towering above 
every otlicr attribute of reason, thought, and action, and 
asserting its royal prerogatives ; if it discovers remorse coiled 
up as a wounded snake and hissing under the throne of the 
mind ; if, too, it discovers the soul itself, as a spiritual nature, 
strong with inherent immortality, and building with a perilous 
and terrible industry here, the structure of its own future eter- 
nity ; it cannot be that the moral tone of the conscience will 
not be powerfully invigorated. And the transition I here 
describe, from an unreflective to a reflective habit, is one that 
is ever more advancing, and will be to the end of the world. 

Next, as it were, to give greater verity to ideas and laws of 
mental necessity, and so to the law of the conscience, devel- 
oped by reflection, geometry and the exact sciences will be 
discovered. The Pythagorean discipline began, we are told, 
with a period of silence : and as silence, according to Lord 
Bacon, is the fermentation of the thoughts, the disciples were 
thus started into a habit of reflection. Next they were exercised 
in geometr}^ to make them aware of the reality, rigidity, and 
invincibility of ideal truth — that kind of truth which is devel- 
oped by reflection. Then they passed into the law of virtue, 
and through this up to God. The school of Crotona was, 
thus, a miniature of the great world itself. The mathematics 
are mere evolutions of necessary ideas, and the moral value 
of a strong mathematical disciphne, has, in this view, never 
been adequately estimated. By no other means could the 
mind be so effectively apprised of the distinct existence, the 
firmness, and the stern necessity of principles. Mere elegant 
literature would leave it in a mire of outward conventional- 
isms, a mere a?sthetic worker among the fluxing matter of 
forms, incapable of a strong pliilosophic reflection, and quite 
as much of those sallies into the ideal world which constitute 
the nerve of the highest poetry. If, besides, the exact sciences 
are found to reign, as they do, over the great realm of nature 
and physical science, and the popular mind sees them sym- 
bolized to view, in all visible existence, then will a new and 
more forcible impression of what law and principle are, 



10 

become universal. Looking up to the heavens and beholding 
all the innumerable orbs and powers of the universe obedient 
to ideal laws, and revolving in forms of the mind ; seeing the 
earth crystalize into shapes of ideal exactness antl necessity, 
and the very atoms of the globe yoke themselves under the 
mental laws of arithmetic , seeing, in a word, the whole com- 
pact of creation bedded in ideal truth, and yielding to the iron 
laws of necessity — then is it impossible not to feel some new 
impression of the rigidity of moral principle, as a law of the 
mind — its distinct existence — its immutal^le oblioation! 

Next you will observe, as if to carry on these impressions 
and make them practical, that as society advances, public 
law becomes a rigid science, and the rights of society are 
subjected to the stern arbitrament of justice. Public law is 
moral. It is the public reason, revolving about the one great 
principle of right, and constructing a science of moral justice. 
Executive power, with all its splendid prerogatives, is seen 
withdrawing to make room for a hi2"her law — even rioht. 
Tribunals of justice are erected and made independent. They 
are to sit clothed with the sacred majesty of right. Their 
adjudications are to be stern decrees of Nemesis — declara- 
tions of exact, scientific justice between the parties. This at 
least is the theory of public litigation ; and if it should happen 
that actual justice is dispensed as seldom as the most caustic 
satirists of the law pretend, still it is a thing of inestimable con- 
sequence that justice should be tluis impersonated among 
men. It is a solemn concession to the supremacy of right, 
such as helps to impress a cultivated people with a new sense 
of the impartial authority of reason and principle. 

If now a condition of civil liberty be achieved (and this, 
we know, belongs to the advanced stages of history) the tone 
of moral obligation will be strengthened in a yet higher degree. 
Liberty imports freedom from constraint, and it must be 
confessed that in those great upheavings and revolutions, by 
which the shackles of unjust dominion have been burst asun- 
der, the constraints of order, and the barriers of law, have 
too often been utterly swept away. The Liberty worshipped 
is License, true son of Liber, and rightly to be named, as 



11 

some of the witty anci(3nts may have thought, from the stout 
old god of the vine. He goes forth, over hill and dale, drawn 
by his fatiier's Kons, brandishing the wrathful thyrsus, boast- 
ing his new inventions, and filling the people's heads with the 
strong wine of democracy, till sense and reason are crazed by 
its funics. But the sober hour comes after, and then it will 
be found that the individual has emerged from under the 
masses in which he lay buried — a person, a distinct man, a 
subject of law, an eternal subject of God. Discharged from 
the constraints offeree, he is free to meet the responsibilities 
of virtue, and he stands out sole and uncovered before the 
smoking mount of the conscience, to receive its law. The 
very doctrine of liberty, too, when it finds a doctrine, will be 
that force put upon the conscience or the reason, is sacrilege. 
Conscience, it will declare, is no other than the sacred throne 
of God, which no power or potentate may dare to touch. 
Mounting thus above all human prerogative to set its own 
stern limits and hold back the strong hand of power, as in 
these latter ages it is beginning to do, how high is the reach of 
conscience seen to be, how mighty its grasp, how impartial its 
reign ! 

I have thus alluded, as briefly as I could, to three or four 
stapes or incidents in the progress of history which make it 
clear that the moral tone of the conscience must be ever 
advancing in power and clearness. 

Pass on now to the outward code of virtue, that which reg- 
ulates her conduct and forms of action. Though there is no 
merit or demerit, nothing right or wrong, in any outward 
conduct as such, still the interests of virtue are deeply invol- 
ved in the perfection of the outward code. The internal life 
of virtue can neither propagate its power nor diffuse its bles- 
sino's, except through the outward state. Furthermore, as 
expression always invigorates what is expressed, and as the 
outward reacts on the inward, by a sovereign influence, it 
becomes a matter of the highest consequence, as regards the 
internal health of virtue, that she should have her outward 
code complete, and, without exception, beautiful. 



12 

Accordinoly there is a woHc of proizressive legislation con- 
tinually going forward, b_v which the moral cocie is perfecting 
itself. This code, as outward, is no fixed immutable thing, 
as many suppose. Custom is its interpreter, and it grows up 
in the same way as the common or civil law, or tlie law mer- 
chant, by a constant process of additions and refinements. 
Life itself is an open court of legislation, where reasonings, 
opinions, wants, injuries, are ever drawing men into new 
senses of duty and extending the laws of society-, to suit the 
demands of an advanced state of being. All art and beauty* 
every thing that unfolds the power of outward criticism, enters 
into this progress. .So does Christian love, wliicli is ever 
seeking to execute its spirit, in the most perfect forms of 
conduct. 

Moral legislation, in fact, is one of the highest incidents of 
our existence. Not that man here legislates, but Cod through 
man ; for it is not by any will of man, that reason, experience 
and custom are ever at work to make new laws and refine 
upon the old — these are to God as an ever smoking Sinai 
under his feet, and, if there be much of dissonance and seem- 
ing confusion in the cloudy mount of custom, we may yet 
distinguish ihe sound of the trumpet, and the tables of stone, 
we shall see in due time, distinctly written, ;is by no human 
finger. Laws will emerge i'rom the experience ol' life, cand get 
power to command us. 

Let us not seem, in this view, to strike at the immutability 
of virtue. We have no such thought. The law of virtue is 
immutable and eternal, above all expediency or self-interest, 
all change, circumstance, power and plan, necessary as God, 
neces?ary even to God. But the substance of virtue lies, as 
we have said, in no outward forms of conduct, and it is only 
these that are subject to modification. Thus there is such a 
thing as time, and time is ever the same thing in its nature. 
But where is time ? Not in the sun, not in the dial, not in the 
clock or watch, or, if there, it is as much every where else. 
Time is ideal, a thing of the mind. But, though time is no 
where in the outward world, it has its signs and measures 
there, and what matter is it if they are changed ? tliat does 



1-3 

not. affect the immutable nature of time. Measured by the 
sun, the moon, the hour-gloss, the clock or watch, the fliohtof 
birds, or the opening of flowers, time is still the same. So it 
is with virtue — it is the same unchanging, eternal principle, 
though its outward code of manifestation has variety and 
progress. 

Neither let us seem to impugn the authority, of the revealed 
law. The statutes of revealed law may be divided into tv^^o 
classes — those which positively command, and those which 
only permit or suffer. The former class ca,n never be repealed 
or set aside. They will stand as roots of progress, and society 
will do them honor, by going on to amplify them and make 
them the basis of a perfect code. But the permissive statutes 
are of a different order. Many of them were given because 
of the hardness of men's hearts, and are already repealed'. 
Others are now in debate and must clearly be discontinued, 
as no longer sufterable in the advanced state of society. A 
moment's reflection will teach you that a system of revealed 
law must submit its form, in some degree, to the present 
capacity of its subjects — and that will be the best M^hich, 
considering all their prejudices and incapacities, will take the 
firmest hold of them and most strengthen the internal power 
of their virtue. Then what was plainh^ a concession to bar- 
barism will of course be discontinued with barbarism. Noth- 
ing is more plain, than that a barbarous people could not 
receive a perfectly beautiful code of conduct. Is it any thing- 
new, that if you give a clown directions how to execute a 
beautiful painting, he could not even take the sense of the 
directions ; or, if you should give him a full code of politeness, 
that he could not enter into its terms ? But how vast in com- 
pass, and multifarious in number, and complicated in form, 
are the actions of a life, compared with the strokes of a painter's 
art, or the items of a polite conduct ! What scope is there here 
for criticism ; what exactness of discipline does it require, 
only to understand what is wise, or useful, or fair, in all cases, 
even when it is revealed. What sharpness of taste, only to 
discriminate or conceive all beautiful actions, when expressly 
commanded — greater, by far, than any nation as yet possesses. 



14 

So plain is it that angelic law is possible only to angelic 
advancement — equally plain, that the moral code, even as 
revealed, must be limited, in a degree, by the narrowness and 
crudity of those who are to receive it. 

Neither let us wonder, it" it takes man}'' ages to clear the 
moral code of all barbarous anomalies, and bring to it a lull 
maturity. Experience must have a long and painful discipline, 
philosophy must go down into the grounds of things, rights 
must be settled, letters advanced, the beautiful arts come into 
form ; God must wait on the creature, and conduct him on 
through long ages of mistake and crudity, command, reason, 
tr}^ enlighten, brood, as over chaos, I)y his quickening power, 
and then it will be only by slow degrees that the moral taste 
of the world will approximate to a coincidence witli the periect 
moral taste of God. 

Let us now see if facts will justify our reasonings. Far 
Ijack, in the remotest ages of deiinite histor}?-, we find one of 
the world's patriarchs so fortunate or unfortunate as to be the 
inventor of wine, by which he is buried in the excesses of 
intoxication, we know not how many times, with no apparent 
compunction. Saying nothing of abstinence, not even the law 
of temperance had yet been reached. Another, who is called 
the father of the faithful, has not yet so refined upon the moral 
statute against falsehood, as to see that prevarication is to be 
accounted a lie. Accordingly, he more than once, flatly pre- 
varicates, with no apparent sense of wrong. A successor, in 
equal honor for holy j^rincijile, deceives his blind father by a 
trick of disguise, and cheats him out of his blessino-. He 
takes advantage also of a starving brother to extort his birth- 
right — acts which in our day would cover him with infamy. 
These were all holy men. It was not so much sin as barba- 
rism, that marred their history. These instances of unripe 
morality furnish no ground of cavil against the Scriptures, but, 
to all reasoning minds, they are the strongest evidences of 
their real antiquity and truth. I have not time to lead you 
through the Jewish history. The remarkable fact in it is, that, 
with so high notions of holy principle, the outward, style of 
virtue is 3'et so harsh, so visibly barbarous. You seem to be 



15 

in a raw physical age, where force and sensualism and bigotry 
of descent display their odious and unlovely presence, even 
in men of the highest worth and dignity. As you approach 
the later age of their literature and history, you perceive a 
visible mitigation of its features. Christianity then appears. 
The old outward regimen of beggarly elements is swept away 
new precepts of benevolence and forbearance are given, the 
Jew is lost in the man, and the man becomes a brother of his 
race. How sublime the contrast, then, of Genesis and John ! 
What we see, in this glance at sacred history, is quite as 
conspicuous in the general review of humanity. The moral 
code of a savage people has always something to distinguish 
it as a savage people's code. So with that of a civilized. 
The very changes and inventions of society necessitate an 
amplification and often a revision of the moral code. Every 
new state, office, art, and thing must have its law. The old 
law maxim, cuUibct. in sua arte crcdendum est — every trade 
must be suffered to make its law, is only half the truth. 
Every trade must make its law. If bills of exchange are 
invented, if money is coined, if banks are established, and 
offices of insurance, if great corporate investments are intro- 
duced into the machinery of business, it will not be long- 
before a body of moral opinions will be generated, and take 
the force of law over these new creations. Fire-arms, also, 
printing, theatres, distilled spirits, cards, dice, medicine — all 
new products and inventions must come under moral maxims, 
and create to themselves a new moi'al jurisprudence. The 
introduction of popular liberty makes the subject a new man, 
lays upon him new duties, which require to be set forth in 
new maxims of morality. Already have I shown you, in 
these brief glances, a new world created for the dominion of 
law. And what was said of the human body, growing up to 
maturity, is equally true of the great social body : — 

" For nature crescent, does not grow alone, 
In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and heart 
(rrows wide withal.'' 



16 

I also liinlccl, that new arts and inventions must olten so 
chanfi'e the relations of old things and practices, as to require 
a revision of their law. The Jew may rightly take his iaterest 
money now, ibr other reasons than because the Mosaic polity 
is dissolved. He is not the same man that his fathers were. 
He lives in a new world, and sustains new relatious. The 
modes of business, loo, are all so changed that the merits of 
receiving interest money are no more the same, although tlie 
mere outward act is such as to be described iu the same 
words. At this very moment, we have it on hand to revise 
the moral code in reference to three very important subjects 
— wine, slavery, and war. The real (]uestioii, on these sub- 
jects, if we understood om-selves, is not, on one side whether 
Ave can torture ihe Scripture so as to make it condemn all that 
we desire to exclude ; nor, on the other, wiiether we are bound, 
for all time, and eternity to Ijoot, to justify what the Scripture 
gutters. But the (jueslion, piiilosophically stated, is whether 
new c(jgnate inventions and uses, do not make old practices 
more destructive, old vices more incurable — whether a new 
age of the world and a capacity of better things, have not 
so changed the relations of the practices in issue, that they arc 
nolong(n- the same, and no longer to be justified. Physically 
speaking it is the same act to go into a certain house, and 
to go into it having a contagious disease — not morally. 
Phvsically sf)eaking, it is the same act to go into it having a 
contagious (Hsease, and to go into it when the inmates have 
found a new medicine which is proof against the contagion — 
not morally. The moral import of actions, physically the 
same, is thus ever changing, and no reform is bad, because it 
requires a revision of law ; for the change of condition, 
wrought by time, may be so great as to render the former 
law inapplicable. It is conceivable that even a positive 
statute of revelation may lose its applicability, by reason 
of a radical change in the circumstances it was designed 
to cover. Nor can it properly be said that such a stat- 
ute is repealed — it is only waiting for the circumstances 
in which its virtue lay. A new rule contradictory to it in 
words, may yet be wholly consistent with it, and bring no 



17 

reflection on its merits. Accordingly, in what are called re- 
forms^ the real problem more frequently is to revise or mitigate 
law, or to legislate anew. And there is no evil in the human 
state, nothing opposed to the general good and happiness, 
which cannot be lawed out of existence by an adequate appeal 
to truth and reason, which are God's highest law. Nothing, 
1 will add, which shall not thus be lawed out of existence. 

Thus it is within the memory of persons now living, that a 
clergyman of England, specially distinguished for his piety, 
forsook the slave trade, by compulsion of Providence, and not 
because of any Christian scruples concerning it. Nioht and 
morning he sent up his prayers to God, blended witli the 
groans of his captives, and had his Christian peace, amono- 
the lacerated limbs and the unpitied moans of as many as his 
ship could hold. Now a law is matured against this traifick, 
and the man is a monster who engages in it. And if \'ou 
will see the progress of the moral code, you may take your 
map and trace the exact countries which this new law has 
reached, just as you may trace, from an eminence, the shad- 
ows of the clouds, as they sail over a landscape. 

If you will see the work of moral legislation on a scale yet 
more magnificent, you have only to advert to what is called 
the international code. I know of nothing which better marks 
the high moral tone of modern history, tlian that this sublime 
code of law should have come into f()rm and established its 
authority over the civilized world within so short a time; for 
it is now scarcely more than two hundred years since it took 
its being. In the most polished and splendid age of Greece 
and Grecian philosophy, piracy was a lawful and even honor- 
able occupation. Man, upon the waters, and the shark, in 
them, had a common right to feed on what they could subdue. 
Nations were considered as natural enemies, and for one 
people to plunder another, by force of arms, and to lay their 
country waste, was no moral wrong, any more than for the 
tiger to devour the lamb. In war, no terms of humanity were 
binding, and the passions of the parties were mitigated by no 
constraints of law. Captives were butchered or sold into 
slavery at pleasure. In time of peace, it was not without great 



18 

hazard that the citizen of one country could venture into 
another for purposes of travel or business. 

Go now with me to one of the Italian cities, and there you 
shall see in his quiet retreat, a silent thoughtful man bending 
his ample shoulders and more ample countenance over his 
table, and recording with a visible earnestness something that 
deeply concerns the world. This man has no ofiice or 
authority to make him a lawgiver, other than what belongs to 
the gifts of his own person — a brilliant mind, enriched by the 
amplest stores of learning, and nerved by the highest principles 
of moral justice and Christian piety. He is, in fact, a fugi- 
tive, and an exile from his country, separated from all power 
but the simple power of truth and reason. But he dares, 
you will see, to write De Jure Belli ct Pdcls. This is the 
man who was smuggled out of prison and out of his country, 
by his wife, in a box that was used for much humbler purpo- 
ses, to give law to all tlK:- nations of mankind in ail luture 
ages. On the sea and on the hind, on all seas ami all lands, 
he shall bear sway. In the silence of his study, he stretches 
ibrth the scepter of law over all potentates and people, defines 
their rights, arranges their intercourse, gives tliem terms of 
war and terms of peace, \vhich they n^ay not disregard. In 
the days of battle too, when kings and kingdoms are thun- 
dering in the shock of arms, this same Hugo Grotius shall be 
there, in all the turmoil of passion mid the smoke of ruin, as 
a presiding throne of law, commanding above the comman- 
ders, and, when the day is cast, prescjibing to tlie victor 
terms of" mercy and justice which not even his hatred of the 
Ibe, or the exultation of the hour may dare to transcend. 

The system of commercial law, growing out of the exten- 
sion of trade and conjinerce, in modern times, is another 
triumph of moral legislation almost equally snblime with the 
international. The science of njunicipal law, too, has not 
been less remarkable for its |)rogress. Saying nothing of the 
common law or law of England, which is, in a sense, the child 
of the civil or Roman law, what mind can estimate the 
moral value and power of this latter code, extended, as its 
sway now is, over nine-tenths of the civilized world. 



19 

Now all these systems of l,uv, international, commercial 
and civil, are {bunded in the natural reasons of the moral 
code, and are, in fact, results of moral legislation. Consid- 
ered, too, as accumulations of moral judgment, elaborated in 
the lapse of age.s, they constitute a body of science, when 
taken together, compared with which every other work of 
man is insignificant. No other has cost such infinite labor 
and patience, none has embodied such a stupendous array of 
talent, none has brought into contribution so much of impartial 
reason and moral gravit3% 

Under these extensions of law, the world has become an- 
other world. Anarchy and absolute will are put aside to suffer 
the dominion of scientific justice. The nations are become, 
to a great extent, one empire. The citizen of one country 
may travel and trade securely in almost every other. Wars 
are mitigated in ferocity, and so far is the moral sentiment of 
the world advanced in this direction, that military prepara- 
tions begin to look formal and wear the semblance of an anti- 
quated usage. We may almost dare to say as Pandulph to 
Lewis, and with a much higher sense: — 

'• Therefore, thy threatening colors now wind up 
And tame the savage spirit of wild war, 
That, like a lion fostered up at hand, 
It may lie gently, at the foot of peace. 
And be no further harmful than in sho'w.'' 

Who shall think it incredible that this same progress of 
moral legislation, which has gone thus far in the international 
code, may ultimately be so fir extended as to systematize 
and establish rules of arbitrament, by which all national dis- 
putes shall be definitely settled, without an appeal to arms. 
And so it shnll result that, as the moral code is one, all law 
shall come into unity, and a kind of virtual oneness embrace 
all nations. We shall flow together in the destruction of dis- 
tances and become brothers in the terms of justice. And so 
shall that sublime declaration of Cicero, in his Republic, where 
he sets forth the theoretic unity of law, find a republic of 
nations, where it shall have a more than theoretic verity: — 
" Nee erit alia lex Romre, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac, 



20 

sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, et sempiterna, et im- 
morlnlis continebit, unusque erit communis quasi magister et 
impcrator omnium Deus. Ille Icgis hujus inventor deceptator 
lator!" 

I have thus endeavored to show that, as virtue is Iwofokl, 
so there is a twofold law of progress by which it is advanced 
in human society — one by which the inward principle invig- 
orates its tone, another by which its outward code is extended 
and made to accord more nicely with the highest beauty and 
the most perfect health of virtue. Both lines of progress 
have been active up to this time, with results as definitely 
marked as the ])rogress of history itself. What now is to 
come ? By what future events and changes, shall the work 
go on to its completion ? 

That must be unknown to us, though the present momentum 
of society is enough, by itself, to assure us in what line the 
future motion must proceed. There are, at the same time, 
three great forces in this motion, which we know are incapa- 
ble of exhaustion. These must always work on together, as 
they have done up to this lime, to assist the triumph of the 
moral element. Other forces have entered into history, such 
as the Gothic irruptions, the crusades, the feudal system, the 
free cities and their commerce, which, being more nearly phys- 
ical, lose their distinct existence, as soon as tbey are incor- 
porate, and are manifested only by their results. Not so with 
the three of which I am to speak. They belong to all future 
time, and will never cease their distinct activity. These three 
are the Greek, the Roman and the Christian. The Greek, as 
belonging to the outward department of virtue and assisting 
it by the high aesthetic discipline of its literature. The Roman, as 
asseriing the ideal law of virtue and giving it a corporate em- 
bodiment. The Christain, as descending from heaven to pour 
itself into both, quicken their activity and bring them into 
earnest connexion with a government above. 

The first thing to be observed in the Greek character and 
literature, is its want of a, moral lone. A mere incidental 



21 

remark of Schlegel touches what miiT^ht rather be made the 
staple of criticism, in the works of this wonderful people. 
" Even in those cases," he says, "where the most open expres- 
sion of deep feeling, morality, or conscience, might have been 
expected, the Greek authors are apt to view the subject of 
which they treat, as a mere appearance of the life, with a cer- 
tain perfect, undisturbed, and elaborate equabilitA^" How 
could it be otherwise, where an Aristotle, endowed with the 
most gigantic and powerlul intellect ever given to man, could 
only define \'irtue itself as the middle point between two ex- 
tremes, and every moral evil as being either too much or too 
little ? Socrates and his splendid disciple, it is true, had a 
warmer and more adequate idea of virtue ; though it will 
escape the notice of no thoughtful scholar, that they were 
charmed with virtue, rather as the Fair than as the Right. 
This is specially true of Plato. He draws her forth out of 
his own intellectual beauty, as Pygmalion his ivory statue, 
and, as this was quickened into life by the word of Venus, so 
his notion of virtue takes ils life from him, from the charms in 
which it is invested. Evil and vice, too, connect, in his mind, 
rather with deformity and mortification than with remorse. 

On the whole, there is almost no civilized people whose mo- 
rality is more earthly and cold than that of the Greeks. At 
the same time, their sense of beauty in forms, their faculty of 
outward criticism is perfect. Their temples and statutes are 
forms of perfect art. Their poets and philosophers chisel 
their thoughts into groups of marble. Their religion or mythol- 
ogy is scarcely more than a gallery of artistic shapes — 
exquisitely sensual. They alone, of all people, in fact, have 
a religion without a moral — gods for the zest of comedy, gay 
divinities that go hunting, frolicking and thundering over sea 
and land. Genius only M-orships. The chisel is the true 
incense, to hold a place in epic machinery, the true circle of 
Providence. Everything done or written, is subtle, etherial, 
beautiful, and cold ; even the fire is cold — a combustion of 
icicles. There can be no true heat, where there is no moral 
life. They love their country, but they do not love it well 
enough to suffer justice to be done in it, or to endure the pres- 



22 

ence of virtue. Their braver_y is cunning their patriotism an 
elegant selfishness. In their ostracism, they make pubhc 
envy a public right, and faction constitutional. We look up 
and down their history, survey their temples without a religion, 
their streets lined with chiseled divinities, set up for ornamen- 
tal effect, we listen to their orators, we open the shining rolls 
of their literature, and exclaim, beautiful lust ! splendid sen- 
suality ! elegant faction ! ornamental religion ! a nation per- 
fect in outward criticism, but blind, as yet, to the real nature 
and power of the moral element. 

And yet this people have done a work, in their wa}', which 
is even essential to the ti'iumph of virtue. Their sense of 
beauty, their nice discriminations of art and poetic genius, are 
contributions made to the outward life and law of virtue. A 
barbarous people, like the wild African or Indian, 3^ou will 
observe, have no sense of firm, and tlieir moral code will, for 
that reason, be a crude and shapeless barbarism. To mature 
the code of action, therefore, and finish its perfect adaptation 
to the expression of virtue and the ornament of life, requires 
a power of form, or of outward criticism in full development. 
Considered in this view, it is impossible to overrate the value 
of the Greek art. A whole department of human capacity, 
the power of forms or of outward criticism and expression, 
must be the disciple of Greece to the end of the world. This 
same Greek beauty, which can never perish, will go into the 
Roman life, and assist in that process of legal criticism by 
which the civil law shall be matured. Then it will go into the 
wild Gothic liberty that is thundering, as yet, along the Baltic 
and through the plains of Scythia, to humanize it, and make 
the element of liberty an element of order and virtue. It will 
breathe a spirit of beauty into every language and literature 
of every civilized people ; and their intellectual and moral life 
will crystallize into the forms of beauty thus evolved, lose 
iheir opacity, and become transparent to the light of reason 
and law. The Christian faith, too, whose prerogative it is to 
make all the works both of man and of God subservient to its 
honor, will take to itself all the beauty of all the Greeks and 
make it the beauty of holiness- 



We come now to the Romans, a people of as high original- 
ity as the Greeks, though not so regarded by the critics, 
because their originality did not run into the Ibrms of litera- 
ture. The ideal of the Greeks was beauty, that of the Romans 
law and scientific justice. We need not suffer the common 
wonder, therefore, that all the ambition of the Roman scholars, 
aided by hordes of emigrant rhetoricians, could not reproduce 
the Grecian classic spirit in that people ; for whatsoever 
power of outward criticism was awakened followed after the 
Roman ideal, going to construct the moral rigors of the Stoic 
philosophy and fashion the sublime structure of civil jurispru- 
dence. And Greece was as incapable of the Roman law, as 
Rome of the Grecian literature. Which of the two has made 
the greatest and most original gift to the future ages, it will 
ever be impossible to judge. 

It was a distinction of the Roman people, that they had 
a strong sense of moral principle. They could feel the 
authority of what some call an abstraction, and suffer its rigid 
sway. Their conscience had the tone of a trumpet in their 
bosoms. This was owing in part, we may believe to their 
martial discipline; lor it is a peculiarity of this, that it bends 
to nothing in the individual, his interest, comfort, or safety. 
It is as destitute of feeling as an abstraction, and accommo- 
dates the soldier to the absolute sway of rigid law. Accus- 
tomed to the stiff harness of discipline, to be moved by the 
unbending laws of mechanism up to the enemy's face and the 
bristling points of defence, there to live or <lie, as it ma}'' 
happen, without any right to consider which; a nation of 
soldiers learns how to suffer an absolute rule, and, if the other 
and more corrupt influences of war do not prevent, is pre- 
pared, with greater facility, to acknowledge the stern ideal 
law of virtue. 

The Romans, too, had a religion, a serious and powerful 
faith, gods that kept their integrity and held a relation to the 
conscience. Even INIars himself, their tutelary deity, in so far 
as he was a Roman and not a Greek, was, on the whole, a much 
better Christian than some who have presided in Rome, with 



24 

quite other pretensions.* It was also a beautiiul distinction of 
the religious character ol" this people, that they alone, of all 
heathen nations, erected temples to the mere ideals of virtue 
— Faith, Concord, Modesty, Peace. 

The Romans, also, were an agricultural people, naming 
their noljle families after the hcan, the yeo, the Icnfile, vetches, 
and other plants ; retaining the sobriety, frugality, and all tlie 
rigid virtues of a life in the fields. These are the people to 
suiler a censorshij"), in which every licentious, and effeminate 
h;ihit shall expose the subject to a public degradation — the 
only people, I will add, that has ever existed, capable of such 
a discipline. 

Pass out with me, now, into the Tusculan country, and I 
will show you one of these old Puritans. A simple rustic 
house is before you, the house of a small country farmer. 
A man with red hair, and a pair of grey eyes twinkling under 
his licry eyebrows, a muscular, iron-faced man meets you at 
the gate. This man w'lW boast his dinner as a triumph of 
economy — bread baked by his wile, and turnips boiled by 
liim.sclf Of pleasure he is ignorant. He keeps a few slaves, 
Avhom he turns away when they become old ; for it is his way 
to make a rigid abstraction even of the principle of economy. 
In the morning he rises early, and goes ibrth into the neigh- 
boring towns to plead causes. He returns, in the afternoon, 
puts on his frock, and goes out to work among the slaves. 
He is a man of wit, and is to be called the Roman Demos- 
thenes. He is to ])e a great commander, and a part of his 
prowess will be that he spends nothing on himself and makes 
the army pay its way by its victories. He will reap the 
honors of a triumph, he \yill be consul, he will be censor. 
And whenCato is censor, woe to the man who has defrauded 
the treasury! every man than gets over the line of sober 
drink ! every high liver ! every dandy ! Then, to crown all, 



* This will scarcely be thought extravagant by the scholar, who duly consid- 
ers, with what reverence they guarded the sacred ancile let fall from heaven to 
be the pledge of their safety; or compares the processions of the Salii, with 
others of a more recent date and of a different name. 



2o 

this man shall say — tor he loves to cany out a principle — 
that " he had rather his good actions should go unrewarded, 
than his bad ones unpunished." Inexorable, in whatever 
relates to public justice, inflexibly rigid in the execution of his 
orders, he will make history confess, that the Roman govern- 
ment had never before appeared, either so awful or so amiable. 
Roman virtue, therefore, became a proverb, to denote that 
strength of principle, which can bend to no outward obstacle 
or seduction. And the pitch of public virtue displayed by 
this people, especially in the days of"* the ancient republic, is 
one of the greatest moral phenomena of history. Always 
warlike in their habit, inured to scenes of devastation and 
and blood, ambitious for their city and ignorant of any right 
in the world, but the imperial right of Rome, they were, at 
the same time, careless of pleasure and of wealth, stoics in 
iortitude and self-denial, immovable in conjugal fidelity, reve- 
lent to parents, incapable of treachery to their country or dis- 
obedience to the laws, exact and even superstitious in the 
rites of piety. Unjust to every other, people, they were yet 
the firm adherents of ^law and ^justice among themselves. 
They went to war with religious preliminaries. The military 
oath was their sacrament, in which they engaged for a real 
jjfcscnce ; and though it was to be a presence in veritable 
blood, it was yet so religiously fulfilled as to be a bond 
of virtue. They, at first, sent forth their legions to make war 
more, it would seem, because they loved the discipline, than 
because they wanted the plunder. The tramp of their victo- 
rious legions was heard, resounding at the gates of cities and 
across the borders of nations; their leaders were returning, 
every few months, with triumphal entries into the city, that a 
most just people might enjoy and glory in the spectacle of 
their own public wrongs ; till at last debauched by the plun- 
der of their victories, they may be said to have conquered, 
on the same day, both the world and their own virtue together. 
Nor is even this exactly true; lor it is remarkable, that they 
gave Ixick to the subject nations the justice denied them in 
their conquest, and set up the tribunals of Roman law on the 
fields of Roman lawlessness ! Equally remarkable is it that 
in the most dissolute age of the empire, the power of scientific 
law could not be eradicated from the hearts of this wonderful 



26 

people. While the monster Commodus sits upon the throne, 
Papinian and Ulpian occupy the bench, adding to the civil 
code the richest contributions of legal science ! And even the 
signatures of Caracalla and his ministers will be found, not 
seldom, inscribed on the purest materials of the Pandects! 

What then if Pome did not excel in literature ? Had she not 
another talent in her bosom quite as rich and powerful — i\m 
sublime talent of law. In her civil code, she has erected the 
mightiest monument of reason and of moral power that has ever 
yet been raised by human genius. The honest pride of Cicero 
was not misplaced, wlien lie said: "How admirable is the 
wisdom of our ancestors! We alone are masters of civil pru- 
dence, and our sup(?riority is the more conspicuous, if we deign 
to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ritficulous jurisprudence 
of Draco, Solon and Ivvcurgus." Little however did he 
understand, when he thus spake, what gift his country was 
here j^reparing for the human race. Could he have pierced 
the magnificent future, when this same Roman law shoutd 
have its full scientific embodiment ; could he have seen, at the 
distance of twenty centuries, the barbarians of northern and 
western Eui'ope compacted into great civilized nations, and, 
after having van(|uished the Roman arms and empire, all 
quietly sheltered under the Roman jurisprudence ; a new 
continent rising to view, beyond the lost Atlantis, to be fos- 
tered in its bosom ; a spirit of law infused into the whole 
realm of civilized mind and revealing its energy now in the 
common law of England, now in the commercial code, and, 
last of all, in the international — all matured in the pervading 
light and warmth of the lloman; liberty secured by the secu- 
rity of justice ; the fire of the old Roman virtue burning still 
in the bosom of legal science and imparting a character ot 
intellectual and moral gravity to the literature, opinions and 
life of all cultivated nations; and then, to crown the whole, 
the visible certainty that the Roman law has only just begun 
its career, that it must enter more and more widely into the 
fortunes of the race and extend its benign sway wherever law- 
extends, till the globe, with all its peoples, becomes a second 
Roman empire, and time itself the only date of its sove- 
reignty ; — seeing all this, the great orator must have con- 
fessed, that every conception he had before entertained of the 



27 

majesty and grandeur of the Roman jurisprudence, was weak 
and even null. Our minds, even now, can but faintly con- 
ceive the same. 

Such is the moral value of the Greek art and literature, 
such of the Roman law — one as a contribution to the outward 
form of virtue, the other to the authority and power of the 
moral sentiment itself These are gifts wroudit out from 
below — extorted, as we may say, from society. It remains 
to speak of a third power, descending from above, to bring 
the Divine Life into history and hasten that moral age, 
towards which its lines are ever converging. Hitherto, we 
have spoken of causes developed by the mere laws of society, 
Avhich laws however, when deeply sounded, are but another 
name for God, conducting history to its ends, by a presence of 
latent force. In religion, in Christianity, we are to view him 
as coming into mental contemplation, as objective to the intel- 
lect and heart, and operating thus as a moral cause. Here 
lie shows, above us, an external government of laws and 
retributions, connected with the internal law of the con- 
science ; opens worlds of glory and pain beyond this life; 
presents himself as an object of contemplation, fear, love and 
desire ; reveals his own infinite excellence and beauty, and, 
withal, his tenderness and persuasive goodness ; and so pours 
the Divine Life into the dark and soured bosom of sin. 

But you will perceive that a certain degree of intellectual 
refinement and moral advancement was necessary to make 
the approach of so great excellence and beauty intelligible. 
A race of beings immersed in the wild superstitions of feti- 
chism could not receive the divine. And, therefore, it was 
not till the Greek letters and the Roman sovereignty were 
extended through the world, that Jesus Christ made his 
appearance. He is, at once, the Perfect Beauty and the 
Eternal Rule of God — the Life of God manifested under the 
conditions of humanity — by sufferings, expressing the Love 
of God, by love attracting man to his breast. Now there 
enters into human history a divine force which is not latent. 
The law from within meets the objective reality and beauty of 
God from without — conscience links with a government 
above, and morality is taken up into the bosom of religion. 



28 

I will not trace the historical action of Christianity, or show 
how it has subordinated and wrought in all other causes, 
such as I have named. Everyone knows that this new reli- 
gion, sprung of so humble a beginning, has had force enough, 
somehow, to take the rule of human society for the last eigh- 
teen hundred years. x\ncient learning, ancient customs and 
rehgions, emigrations, wars and diplomacies, all the founda- 
tions of thrones and the bulwarks of empire have floated, as 
straws on this|flood. And now it is much to say, that where 
we are, thither Christianity has borne us, and what we arc 
in art, literature, commerce, law and liberty, Christianity has 
made us. 

I will only point you, beside, to a single symptpm of lh(^ 
times, which shows you whither human history is going, h 
is a remarkable distinction of the present era, that we iirc 
deriving rules of common life and obligation from considera- 
tions of BENEFICENCE. We perccivc that the internal law of 
the conscience includes not only justice but love. The spirit 
of Christianity, as revealed in the life of Jesus, has so far 
infused itself into human bosoms, that we feel bound to act, 
not as fellow men but as brothers to the race. We propose 
what is useful, we reason of what is beneficent. Government, 
we claim, is a trust for the equal benefit of subjects. As indi- 
viduals we are concluded, in all matters, by the necessities of 
public virtue and happiness. All the old rules ot" morality, 
which hung upon the colder principle of justice, are suffering 
a revision to execute the principle of love, and every thing in 
public law and private duty is coming to the one test of benefi- 
cence. 

Here I will rest my argument. I undertook to show you 
that human history ascends from the physical to the moral, 
and must ultimately issue in a moral age. I first exhibited 
the fact of a twofold progress in past history, accordant with 
the twofold nature of the moral element. What stupendous 
events and overturnings arc, hereafter, to come pouring their 
floods into the currents of human history, we cannot know or 
conjecture-; but I have brought into view three great moral 
forces, of whose future operation, as of whose past, we may 



29 

well be confident — th^, Greek Art, the Roman Law, and the 
Christian Faith. Th^l^ three being indestructible, incapable 
of death, must roll on, down the whole future of man, and 
work their effects in his history. And, if we are sure of this, 
we are scarcely less sure of a moral age, or of the final ascen- 
dency of the intellectual and moral life of the race. 

I anticipate no perfect state, such as fills the overheated 
fancy of certain dreamers. The perfectibility of man is for- 
ever excluded, here by the tenor of his existence. He is here 
in a flood of successive generations, to make experiment of 
evil, to learn the worth of virtue in the loss of it, and by such 
knowledge be at last confirmed in it. As long, therefore, as 
he is here, evil will be, and life will be a contest with it. 

But a day will come, when the dominion of ignorance and 
jAysical force, when distinctions of blood and the accidents oi' 
fortune will cease to rule the \\orld. Beaut}^ reason, science, 
personal worth and religion will come into their rightful 
supremacy, and moral forces will preside over physical as 
mind over the body. Liberty and equality will be so far estab- 
lished that every man will have a right to his existence, and, 
if he- can make it so, to an honorable, powerful and happv 
existence. Policy will cease to be the same as cunning, and 
become a study of equity and reason. It is impossible that 
wars should not be discontinued, if not by the progress of the 
international code, as we have hinted, yet by the progress of 
liberty and intelhgence ; for the masses who have hitherto 
composed the soldiery, must sometime discover the folly of 
dying, as an ignoble herd, to serve the passions of a few reck- 
less politicians, or to give a name for prowess to leaders whose 
bravery consists in marching them into danger. The arbitra- 
ment of arms is not a whit less absurd than the old English 
trial by battle, and before the world has done rolling, they will 
both be classed together. Habits of temperance must result 
in a gradual improvement of the physical stature and intellec- 
tual capacity of the race. The enormous expenditures of 
war and vice being discontinued, and invention, aided by 
science, having got the mastery of nature, so as to make pro- 
duction more copious and easy, the laboring classes will be 
able to live in comparatively leisure and elegance, and find 
ample time for self-improvement. 



30 

Now beo^ins ihn era of genius ; for all the mind there is, 
being brought into action, and that \n0he best conditions of 
intellectual heahh, it must result that the eminent minds will 
tower as much higher, as the level whence tliey rise is more 
elevated. The old leaden atmosphere of a physical age will 
be displaced by nn intellectual atmosphere, quickening to the 
breath and full of the music of new thoughts. .Society being 
delivered of all that is low, and raised to a general ccnidition 
of comfort and beauty, will, become a new and more inspir- 
ing element. The general peace of nations and the nobler 
peace of virtue, will make the reflective faculty as a clear 
sounding bell in a calm day — every depth of nature will be 
sounded and l)rought into the clear light of philosophy. The 
imagination will be purified I)}' the subjection of the passions, 
and fired by the vigor of a fiiih that sees, in all things visible, 
vehicles of the invisible — and every thing finite eloquent of 
infinity. 

But, what is the greatest pre-eminence, it shall come to pass, 
that, as the ideal of the Greeks was beauty, and that of the 
Romans law, so this new age shall embrace an ideal more 
comprehensive, as it is higher than all, namely, Love. 'I'lie 
magnificent genius of Plato attained to some indistinct con- 
ception of this same thing, in that intellectual love, so much 
extolled by him, as being the power of all that is divine in 
virtue — the love of kindred souls thirsting after truth, and 
tracing back tlieir way to that bright essence, whose image 
they dimly remember, and which, having cast its shadow on 
them in some previous state, made them forever kindred to 
each other and to it. But the love of which I speak is this 
and more — a lo\e to souls not kindred, a love of action and 
of power, as well as of sentiment and of mutual affinity. 
This love is no partial ideal, as every other must be; it is uni- 
versal, it embraces all that is beneficent, pure, true, beautiful 
— God, man — eternity, time. To build up, to adorn, to 
increase enjoyment ; to receive the whispers of that Original 
Love which inhabits all the heights and depths ; to sing out 
the rhythm and eternal harmony of that music wherewith it 
fills, not the stars only, but all the recesses of being ; to go up 
into the heights of reason after its plan, and lay the head of 
philosophy on its bosom ; to weep, rejoice and tremble before 



3i 

it, every where present, every where warm and luminous ; 
palpitating in all that lives, blushing into all that is beautiful, 
bursting out as afire, in all that is terrible — thus employed^ 
filled with this love, as by a storm falling out of heaven, lifted 
and celestially empowered by it, the new moral nge must 
needs unfold a regenerated capacity and construct a literature, 
more nearly divine, than has yet been conceived. All that is 
great in action, disinterested in sufiering, strong in the abhor- 
rence of evil, beautiful in art, wise in judgment, deep in 
science — the keen, the soft, the wrathful and piercing, as 
w^ell as the gentle and patient — ever}- side and. capacity of 
mind will display itself, and as the talent of the Creator unfolds 
its gradeur in love, so by love, the talent of his creature will 
roll out into that full toned harmony of act and power which 
c(jnstitutes the distinction of genius. 



Brothehs in lrtters, — I may not close without some refer- 
ence more personal to ourselves and closer to the occasion. We 
are here, once more, in the classic shades where our youthful be- 
ginnings were nurtured. We most filially, venerate and love the 
place. No where else does memory drop the element of tense 
and become experience as here. Our youtli returns upon us — 
its day-dreams even are here, as we left them, floating on the air 
and resting, in the trees. As now our hearts are open to ingenu- 
ous feeling, let us take to ourselves one more lesson before we 
part, and resolve to wed ourselves unchangeably to the good of 
mankind and the final triumph of virtue. 

First of all let us, as scholars, have faith in tbe future. No 
man was ever inspired through his memory. The eye of Genius 
is not behind. Nor was there ever a truly great man, whose ideal 
was in the past. The oftal of history is good enough for worms 
and monks, but it will not feed a living man. Power moves in 
the direction of hope. If we cannot hope, if we see nothing so 
good for history as to reverse it, we shrink from the destiny of 
our race, and the curse of all impotence is on us. Legions of 
men, who dare not set tlieir face the way that time is going, are 
powerless — you may push them back with a straw. They have 
lost their virility, their soul is gone out. They are owls flying 
towards the dawn and screaming, with bedizened eyes, that light 
should invade their prescriptive and congenial darkness. 

^very scholar should be so far imbued with the philosophic 
spirtt, as to remember that ways and manners, which stands well 

\ 



3:i 

".vith prescription, do not always stand well with reason, and tliat 
respectable practice is often most respectably assaulted. Suffer 
no effeminate disgusts ; neither always be repelled, when a good 
object is maintained by criiid and even pernicious arguments. 
Men are often wiser in their ends than in their reasons, and, if we 
see them staggering after the light, our duty is not to mock tiiem, 
hut to lead them. Consider how God has stood by man?s history 
and labored with him in his crudest follies, and even by means of 
these contrived to help him on. 

We have a country where the legislation of virtue is free as it 
never was before in any other. Every thing true, just, pure, good, 
great, can here unfold itself without obstruction. To say that 
we are all called to be a nation of lawgivers, in the public consti- 
tution, is not all — we are called to be lawgivers in a higher and 
more sacred capacity. Political law, as supported by force, is 
here weak, that it may be strong as supported by reason. Our 
institutions postulate, in every thing, a condition of virtue, and 
Their destiny is to be magnificent as it is a moral destiny. 

Be it then our part, as sclmlars, to be lawgivers, bringing fortli 
to men the determinations of reason, and assisting them to con- 
struct the science of goodness. And consider that it is sound 
opinion, not multitudinous opinion, that takes the force of law. 
Have faith in truth, never in numbers. The great surge of num- 
bers rolls up noisily and imposingly, but flats out on the shore, and 
slides back iiito the mud of oblivion. But a true opinion is the 
ocean itself, calm in its rest, eternal in its power. The storms 
and tumultuous thunders of popular rage and bigoted wrong Avill 
sometime pause, in their travel round the sphere, and listen to its 
powerful voice. And if the night comes down to veil it for a 
time, it is still there, beating on with the same victorious pulse 
and waiting for the day. A right o])inion cannot die, for its life 
is in the moral element, which is the life of God. Have patience, 
and it shall come to pass in due time, that what you rested in the 
tranquillity of reason, has been crowned with the majesty of law. 

Here then, we come as scholars to embrace the destiny of vir- 
tue. The classic discipline received in these consecrated shades, 
we consent to hold as a trust for the Moral Age of man. We 
will think our talents mosthonored, by a devotion to what is the 
most magnificent of human hopes. We will regard it as the 
highest i)oint of dignity, in our several professions, that they are 
penetrated with a moral purpose, and suffer a natural connection 
with the highest ends of history. Contradiction shall not move 
us, sacrifices shall not deter us. Our temper shall partake the 
grander of our objects. And as we are most assimilated, in our 
ends, to that Great Being who rules in all ends, so shall we most 
partake the tranquillity of his wisdom, and the conscious benefi- 
cence that feeds his joy. 



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